Subject: Statement concerning resuscitative efforts for President John
F. Kennedy

Upon receiving a stat alarm that this distinguished patient was being
brought to the emergency room at Parkland Memorial Hospital, I
dispatched Doctors A. H. Giesecke and Jackie H. Hunt with an
anesthesia machine and resuscitative equipment to the major surgical
emergency room area, and I ran down the stairs. On my arrival in the
emergency operating room at approximately 1230 I found that Doctors
Carrico and/or Delaney had begun resuscitative efforts by introducing
an orotracheal tube, connecting it for controlled ventilation to a
Bennett intermittent positive pressure breathing apparatus. Doctors
Charles Baxter, Malcolm Perry, and Robert McClelland arrived at the
same time and began a tracheostomy and started the insertion of a
right chest tube, since there was also obvious tracheal and chest
damage. Doctors Paul Peters and Kemp Clark arrived simultaneously and
immediately thereafter assisted respectively with the insertion of the
right chest tube and with manual closed chest cardiac compression to
assure circulation.

For better control of artificial ventilation, I exchanged the
intermittent positive pressure breathing apparatus for an anesthesia
machine and continued artificial ventilation. Doctors Gene Akin and A.
H. Giesecke assisted with the respiratory problems incident to
changing from the orotracheal tube to a tracheostomy tube and Doctors
Hunt and Giesecke connected a cardioscope to determine cardiac
activity.

During the progress of these activities, the emergency room cart was
elevated at the feet in order to provide a Trendelenburg position, a
venous cutdown was performed on the right saphenous vein, and
additional fluids were begun in a vein in the left forearm while blood
was ordered from the blood bank. All of these activities were
completed by approximately 1245, at which time external cardiac
massage was still being carried out effectively by Doctor Clark as
judged by a palpable peripheral pulse. Despite these measures there
was no electrocardiographic evidence of cardiac activity.

These described resuscitative activities were indicated as of first
importance, and after they were carried out attention was turned to
all other evidences of injury. There was a great laceration on the
right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great
defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration
of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum
had protruded from the wound. There were also fragmented sections of
brain on the drapes of the emergency room cart. With the institution
of adequate cardiac compression, there was a great flow of blood from
the cranial cavity, indicating that there was much vascular damage as
well as brain tissue damage.

It is my personal feeling that all methods of resuscitation were
instituted expeditiously and efficiently. However, this cranial and
intracranial damage was of such magnitude as to cause the irreversible
damage. President Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1300.

Sincerely,

M. T. Jenkins, M.D.

Bibliographic note: Web version based on Report of the President's Commission on the
Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing
Office, 1964. 1 volume, 888 pages. The formatting of this Web version may differ from the
original.